Hashtag nationalism: a discursive and networked digital activism

Abstract

Shinzo Abe, Japan’s former and longest-serving prime minister was assassinated on 8 July 2022. As the world expressed sorrow of the human tragedy, nationalists in China were celebrating the disappearance of a hardline Chinese hawk with great enthusiasm. When a Chinese journalist sobbed for Abe’s death during a live report of the assassination, the surging anti-Japan sentiment exploded and soon developed into a hashtag-based nationalist protest attacking Abe and the journalist. Drawing from cyber nationalism and hashtag activism literature, the author coined a concept ‘hashtag nationalism’ to analyze this protest, the interactions between state-led nationalism and popular nationalism, and the role of digital media in the public-state relation. This article also generalized three affordances of hashtag – interconnectivity, intertextuality, and interdiscursivity – to approach the role of social media in digital activism from a relational perspective. Finally, the analysis revealed the discursive and networked nature of hashtag nationalism.

Keywords

affordance digital activism hashtag nationalism interconnectivity interdiscursivity intertextuality popular nationalism social media

Introduction

The relationship between media and nationalism is a long-standing topic in nationalism and media scholarship. Classic nationalism studies have highlighted the crucial role of media in the rise of nationalism. Scholars claim that mass mediums like newspapers, video, and television can promote collective national symbols, narratives, and historical memories (Anderson, 1991; Billig, 1995; Deutsch, 1966). For those who hold a more radical view of the significance of media like Ernest Gellner, media is an “abstract, centralized, standardized, one to many communication” which would automatically engender nationalism, also an abstract and centralized idea (Gellner, 1983: 127). In addition to nationalism, the formation of nation-states in Europe is also thought of being shaped by media technology. The invention of the Gutenberg-style printing press enabled the formation of a common discourse and language among people who spoke different dialects, which contributed to the emergence of modern nation-states (Anderson, 1991). Mass media is perceived by the classic literature of nationalism as a decisive and determining factor of the emergence of nationalism and modern nation. The nationalism that is promoted by mass media is the dominating type of nationalism in a society. This dominating nationalism is also a state-led nationalism. The power of the media serves to the centralized and top-down nationalism that shapes public opinion.

Studies of nationalism in the digital age somewhat switch from the traditional focus on nation-state and mainstream nationalism to individuals and popular nationalism. Contrary to the traditional media that serves to the authority, digital media seems to empower the public more than the state. Digital media, from websites to platforms, has allowed individualized and decentralized nationalist expressions, especially those from previously insignificant groups, to spread virulent populist nationalist rhetoric (Conversi, 2012; Eriksen, 2007), thereby challenging the dominating narratives of national community and undermining existing social and political establishments (Udupa, 2019). Much of the work on Chinese digital nationalism has also documented the rising of popular nationalism with extreme anti-Japanese sentiment, which may overspill into anti-state protests (Cairns and Carlson, 2016; Gries et al., 2016; Schneider, 2018). But still, the academic discourse on how media empowers the public in the digital age regards media as the determinant in the amplification of grassroots voice.

As the popular/populist nationalism rises in the digital space, a new form of nationalism that primarily relies on social media hashtags to promote bottom-up nationalist discourse, mobilize supporters, and attract public attention has been popular among world-wide audiences. The significance of this new and hashtag-based nationalism is that it draws our attention from the power of media to the human-technology relations. Previous studies, either implying the assistance provided by digital media to the ruling class (classic literature of nationalism) or addressing media empowerment of the grassroots (digital nationalism literature), fail to (1) emphasize the role of different social actors in analyzing the functions and influences of digital media and (2) take the relations between social actors and media into the analysis of the state-public tensions. The ruling party and the public may perceive the possibilities afforded and limitations set by the digital media in very different ways, and consequently adjust their strategies and utilize different aspects of the media to fulfill their goals respectively, which further complicates the relations between state-led nationalism and popular nationalism. A relational approach is necessary to analyze the role of media in the state-public tension. Through the analysis of a hashtag-based nationalist attack toward a Chinese journalist who did a sympathetic report over the death of Shinzo Abe, former prime minister of Japan, this article coins the concept “hashtag nationalism” to elaborate on the tensions between state-led nationalism and popular nationalism and the role of social media in state-public interactions from a relational aspect.

Shinzo Abe and anti-Japan sentiment in China

This article focuses on a nationalist attack toward a Japan-based correspondent Zeng Ying from Shanghai media The Paper. On July 8, 2022, Zeng Ying’s emotional and sympathetic live-stream report of Shinzo Abe’s assassination prompted nationalist sentiments from the Chinese audiences and soon burst out into an online nationalist protest with netizens denouncing Abe’s political stance and cyberbullying Zeng Ying, who sobbed several times while recounting the benefits of Abe’s policies and his contributions to China-Japan relations during the report. #澎湃新闻驻日记者曾颖直播哭丧 (The Paper’s Japan correspondent Zeng Ying wailed for Abe on live streaming) was created on Sina Weibo, a Chinese twitter-like platform, and read more than 9 million times before its link was deleted. Two weeks later, the journalist attempted to end her own life with deep physical and psychological pain.

The strong anti-Japanese sentiment in China is rooted in its historical conflicts with Japan, among which the atrocities and war crimes committed by the Japanese army in the Second World War remains most influential. A series of war-legacy conflicts still generate hostility between the two neighboring nations nowadays. Shinzo Abe, the longest-serving prime minister in Japan, is a key figure in the war-related conflicts in the recent decade, making him an extremely controversial figure in China. In general, Abe angers Chinese nationalists due to his tendency to downplay Japan’s wartime atrocities, such as visiting Yasukuni Shrine, as well as his concerted efforts to loosen restrictions on Japan’s military. His long-term political agenda to increase defense spending and revise the pacifist article in the constitution is also seen by Chinese people not only as a strategy to counter China but a revival of Japanese militarism and expansionism during wartime (Takemoto and Takenaka, 2021). In fact, promoting the constitutional revision program was a major topic of his speech in Nara where he was shot down. One Chinese nationalist media, therefore, argued that Chinese people’s mixed reactions toward the assassination should be understood by foreign audience (Wen, 2022).

The anti-Japan sentiment is also promoted by the patriotism education campaign initiated by the Chinese party-state to garner support for its rule (Zhao, 1998a). The party-state began to highlight patriotism in its propaganda as a replacement of the communist ideology in the late 1980s. A key frame of the patriot education centered around the conflicts between China and foreign nations that invaded China in the past, especially Japan. The government has set up war museums at numerous battlefield sites and designated them as patriotic education bases. The highlight of Japanese war atrocities and Chinese victimhood in official war history was soon echoed throughout society. The public was preoccupied with China’s suffering and felt Japan was indebted a lot to China for its war crimes (He, 2007). The celebration of Abe’s death from Chinese nationalists is an extension of the anti-Japan sentiment propagated by the party-state.

Meanwhile, public sentiment often goes beyond expectations of the party-state and forms an anti-state sentiment. For instance, the online and offline anti-Japan protests triggered by the territorial dispute over Diaoyu/Senkaku island fermented social turbulence in many major cities, caused heavy economic losses, put huge pressure on the state’s foreign policy (Gries et al., 2016), and even reduced the legitimacy of the party-state’s rule (Cairns and Carlson, 2016).

Conceptualizing hashtag nationalism: hashtag activism and affordance

Hashtag nationalism is defined as a type of digital nationalism that is based on the use of social media hashtags for nationalist expressions. The concept can contribute to nationalism analysis in two ways, each of which dialogs with one line of research. First, hashtag nationalism incorporates existing studies of hashtag activism to elaborate on the tensions between the top-down nationalist propaganda and the bottom-up nationalist expressions. Second, hashtag nationalism includes the concept of affordance to illustrate the relations between human actors and media technology.

Discursive and networked: hashtag nationalism and state-public interactions

The official nationalism endorsed by the ruling class is often in contrast to popular nationalism as the former manages to arouse nationalist sentiment among the public to garner support and set the social agenda, while the latter is inclined to go out of control and put a threat to the state (Anderson, 1991). In China, there is a similar tension between official nationalism and popular nationalism. Chinese popular nationalism has deep roots in the top-down nationalist propaganda, such as the hostility to Japan (He, 2007) and support to the ruling communist party (Zhao, 2004), while bottom-up nationalist expressions often thrived outrageously and spilled over, turning their anger and resentment toward the party-state (Han, 2019). The extreme outbursts of nationalist sentiments might develop into a challenge to the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (Gries, 2005; Shirk, 2007).

Hashtag nationalism approaches state-public relations with an emphasis on the discursive nature of digital nationalism. Most digital nationalist activism takes place exclusively through social media platforms and practitioners rely heavily on discourse generation and dissemination to make their voice heard. The state-public interaction also becomes a discursive battle between the state and grassroots nationalists. Hashtag nationalism affirms the discursive nature of digital nationalism activism by arguing that activism is inherently a kind of political practice to challenge existing discourses through creating new ones (Shaw, 2016). Hashtags with world-wide influences such as #Metoo and #BlackLivesMatter have brought social awareness of gender and racial discriminations that are deeply entrenched in our societies through information sharing (Wang and Zhou, 2021), storytelling (Clark, 2016), and identity claiming (Alingasa and Ofreneo, 2021). Apart from promoting bottom-up narratives, hashtag nationalism also pays attention to the counter forces. The openness of hashtags enables different social actors to post different opinions. The hashtags used by certain social movements can be hijacked or trolled by opponents and their meanings being re-appropriated (Ofori-Parku and Moscato, 2018; Worthington, 2020). In this sense, hashtag nationalism pays attention to the tension between state-led nationalism and popular nationalism. This article shows that the discursive power of decentralized expressions with a collective standpoint embedded in the hashtag can challenge the official nationalism, and the state can also use hashtags to respond to this rising populist pressure.

Besides, hashtag nationalism is also a networked nationalist activism because the power of a new discourse lies in its firm collective standpoint strengthened by the networked individual expressions. One hashtag can invite personalized expressions from individuals to form one collective voice (Baer, 2016), compete for visibility and social recognition with dominant social narratives (Dejmanee et al., 2020), forge online political temporality in a short period of time (Bonilla and Rosa, 2015), and even catalyze offline protests (Myles, 2019). The networked nationalist public is formed with the linkages provided by social media hashtags. The linkages provided by the nationalist hashtag in our case enables the physical connections of social media posts with different interpretations of the emotional expressions from the journalist, and the semiotic connections between different text contains different discourses as well, forming a networked public based on their shared nationalist standpoint. Meanwhile, the deletion of the hashtag linkage enforced by the party-state can loosen the network between individual nationalists, consequently repressing the nationalist sentiment. The analysis of the networked nature of hashtag nationalism also illustrates the state-public interactions.

Affordances of hashtag: a relational approach to nationalists and digital technology

Hashtag nationalism takes a relational approach to the roles of digital media in examining the tensions between state-led nationalism and popular nationalism. Existing literature, both the classic nationalism studies and the more recent cyber-nationalism research, have displayed an inclination to underscore the influence of media on nationalism, rather than the opposite. These media-centered studies can easily develop into technological determinism, simplifying the complicated human-technology interactions where human and media mutually influence each other into a simple causal relationship that technology would shape the form and content of nationalism. Digital nationalism studies have documented how grassroot nationalists speak out their voices with the support of social media (Schneider, 2018; Yang, 2003; Zhang et al., 2018) and how the mainstream nationalism uses technology to respond to populist pressure (Han, 2015; King et al., 2017), but very few studies give a particular emphasis on the tension between the state and the public. More analyses of the tensions between different social actors and the role of social media in shaping online nationalist discourse are needed (Fang and Repnikova, 2018).

Hashtag nationalism draws from a relational concept of affordance to elucidate the interactions between different social actors and the role of social media in shaping their interactions. It offers a middle ground between technological determinism and social constructionism (Hutchby, 2001). In short, affordances describe the possibilities provided by a technology for human actions. The concept originates from ecological psychology in analysis of animal-environment relations (Gibson, 1986) and later becomes one of the most frequently used concepts in discussion of human-technology relation in communication studies. Technology has objective qualities, meanwhile users have subjective perceptions of technology’s utility. The objective qualities of technology might facilitate users or set limits on user actions in specific contexts, and the results of using technology in different contexts will change users’ perception. An affordance is shaped by the materiality of technologies, the abilities of users, and the contexts of technology use (Evans et al., 2017: 36). None of them are more privileged than the other and no one should be understood as the deterministic factor. Affordance allows us to focus on the interactive relations between grassroot nationalists and social media, party-state and social media that shapes the form and content of digital nationalist expressions. The concept of hashtag nationalism tries to avoid statements like social media serves to the state or to empower the public, rather it aims to articulate the dynamic relationships between different actors who use technology, and the relations between actors and technology as well.

Materials and method

Since the outbreak of the nationalist sentiment, the author embarked on the data gathering and mapped out the development of the hashtag nationalist movement and interactions between involved parties, including the nationalists, the journalist Zeng Ying, and the digital platform. The analyzed data includes all the hashtagged posts on Sina Weibo under the hashtag “The Paper’s Japan correspondent Zeng Ying wailed for Abe on live streaming” (N = 1348). A thematic coding of the posts was conducted to further analyze the affordances of hashtag. Themes include: Anti-Japan argument (N = 589), attacks on Zeng Ying (N = 279), attacks on Shinzo Abe (N = 274), professionalism in Journalism (N = 98), female behaviors (N = 65), and uncategorized posts (N = 43).

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) was applied to interpret the words, sentences, and images produced by the nationalists in the data. According to Foucault, discourse manifests people’s institutionalized ways of talking, thinking, and acting that enforce normalcy and thereby generate power (Foucault, 1990). This article uses CDA to analyze the power relation (1) between the Chinese party-state and the public and (2) between social actors and social media. First, the analysis of key themes and framing strategies deployed by the nationalists displaying their perceived normalcy of the China-Japan relation. The extent to which this normalcy conforms to the official nationalism discourse advocated by the party-state’s patriotism campaign would show the state-public relation. Second, concepts from Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis are used to generalize the discursive affordances of the hashtag. Hashtag nationalism is a digital-online activism that is based on the dissemination of discourse attached to hashtags. The affordances of social media that help generate and disseminate discourse are essential for the discursive protest to fulfill its goal.

Affordances of hashtag: discursive and networked hashtag nationalism

Hashtag nationalism, like other kinds of hashtag activism, is a discourse-based digital expression that aims to mobilize individuals to promote certain social agendas. It is understood as a form of social drama with compelling storytelling (Clark, 2016), which points out social crises, contests social meanings, and reintegrates interpretive frameworks. Information production and dissemination are crucial in this process, especially considering that the social dramas in the nationalist hashtags are often contrary to the mainstream discourse. A significant difference between hashtag nationalism and its traditional counterpart is the lack of formal organizing process. Hashtags take up the role that was previously occupied by institutions and organizations to coordinate individual participants and collectivize individual expressions. This networked nature of hashtag activism is what Bennett and Segerberg (2012) called “the logic of connective action” in the digital era. The analysis of the hashtag nationalism that promotes anti-Abe sentiments also highlights the interplay of the individual and the collective. Based on the analysis of hashtags from Bonilla and Rosa (2015) and the analysis of discourses from Fairclough (1993), interconnectivity, intertextuality, and interdiscursivity are proposed as three affordances of hashtags in promoting popular nationalism.

Interconnectivity

Interconnectivity is an affordance of hashtags to connect information and interpretation with a collective standpoint. The term interconnectivity is employed to emphasize the connection between individual and the collective. It has two layers of meaning: First, being interconnective is being connective, which means that hashtags can physically bring different social media posts together with the linkage provided. Second, being interconnective is also about being interrelated within the same nationalist standpoint. The decentralized and personalized expressions in the same hashtags are related with the same nationalist standpoint of the hashtag.

Interconnectivity is realized by the standpoint that is embedded in the name of a protest hashtag. Hashtags with worldwide influence such as #BlackLivesMatter, #BringBackOurGirls, #MuslimsAreNotTerrorist express the standpoint of their digital protests through their names. In our case, the name of the hashtag “The Paper’s Japan correspondent Zeng Ying wailed for Abe on live streaming” also shows its nationalist standpoint. Death wail (“哭丧”) is part of funerary rites developed in ancient China and remained popular in many rural areas nowadays. It is customary for blood relatives, particularly the children of the deceased, to wail and cry during mourning as an expression of their pain and respect to the deceased (Watson et al., 1988). In fact, instead of crying loudly like the traditional death wail at funerals, Zeng only sobbed and wept during the live report, but nationalists took it as a sign of her sincere admiration and love of Shinzo Abe. They used death wail in the hashtag to denounce that Zeng’s sobbing for the death of a Japanese right-wing politician was inappropriate because it was a wail for someone with no blood relation. Simply using the hashtag in one’s post would repeat and strengthen the irony expressed in the name of the hashtag. In other words, the hashtag invites people to share information about the ongoing incident and their interpretation in a nationalist way.

As the hashtag keeps inviting expressions from users, the posts are interconnected and the collective nationalist standpoint is strengthened. Below are four Weibo posts that were gathered and translated into English (the hashtag was omitted). They show four different interpretations of the same incident.

When I took a look [at the video], I was shocked. There are so many jingri. Her grandparents must be Japanese invaders’ translators.

Where is the decency of the commercialized media? Where do you stand? Where is the consciousness? Don’t you do a political review of your journalist?

Can’t the hashtag be a trending topic? Can’t the platform block more? I am about to vomit.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman @Zhaolijiangerenweibo Zhao LiJian: I have no comment on the various comments of Chinese netizens. Ps: I admit I am ill-mannered. I gloat over the death. Not on behalf of the country, the province, the city, the county, the town, nor the village! I only represent my own views!

The interconnectivity of the nationalist hashtag physically brings these different interpretations together. The first one denounced Zeng as a jingri (literally means a spiritual Japanese) who is perceived as holding strong affections and support to Japan. The second attacked The Paper, arguing that it is a commercialized media corporation without concerns of national interests. One must pass the political review, a standard procedure that checks one’s political stance and background before getting a job in the Chinese government. The author apparently believed that a journalist should also undergo such a process. The third one found fault with Sina Weibo, questioning that the platform may block the hashtag. The last one emphasized the author’s firm and hardline nationalist standpoint even though it was different from the official statement. Interconnectivity provides certain degrees of openness under the nationalist frame. It offers a starting point and a foundation for participants to further develop their own interpretation of the incident, which helps form a networked nationalist public (Polletta, 2006). Although their interpretations are different, they all share the same nationalist frame and can forge an alliance against their pro-Japan enemy. As a matter of fact, the openness is not unlimited because the hashtag only encourages users to interpret the incident in different nationalist ways.

Intertextuality

Different from interconnectivity that physically connects different social media posts with a same nationalist standpoint, intertextuality refers to the connections of nationalist texts to other texts from literature and other sources. To present other texts, a common method is to screenshot materials from other topics and then write down users’ own interpretations of them with the hashtag. This explicit presentation of one text in another is what Fairclough (1993) called manifest intertextuality. For example, the post in Figure 1 used a hashtag #七七事变 (#July 7 incident) to illustrate the importance of learning from the history of Japanese invasion, and criticism of Zeng who is deemed as failing to do that. The July 7 incident refers to the battle between China’s National Revolutionary Army and the Imperial Japanese Army in 1937. It Is regarded as the start of Japan’s full-scale invasion of China during the Second World War and an important symbol of the 100 years of China’s national humiliations promoted by the Chinese party-state to justify their rules. The last attached photo of the post is also about learning from history. It frequently appeared in various memorials of the 85th anniversary of the July 7 incident in 2022. The photo cited a well-known idiom in China: “以史为鉴” (means using history as a mirror to learn from history). In the eyes of nationalists, Zeng did not learn from history as she held an online lottery to attract new followers on July 7. The author used these texts in the post to tell the audience to remember the history of Japanese invasion and to denounce Zeng who failed to do so. The power of intertextuality is that by referring to the national humiliation narrative embedded in the text of the July 7 incident and the well-known idiom, the attack on Zeng as one who did not respect the sufferings of Chinese people is much more persuasive.

Figure 1.

A hashtagged post linking a broad range of texts from disparate topics.

Intertextuality also helps the audience to decode the texts. To comprehend the texts produced by nationalists, one must understand those texts that preceded them. This is called the “‘obligatory’ nature of intertextuality in textual decoding” (Allen, 2021: 122). With the interconnectivity of hashtags, one could click the link to quickly get information about the quoted texts and acquire the required knowledge to decode the message sent by nationalists. Users who are not familiar with the implication of the July 7 incident can quickly retrieve related texts to foster textual decoding, comprehend the linkage between learning from history and nationalist attack toward Zeng.

The intertextual potential of the hashtag can be further realized with the @ function, with which the audience can be directed to text producers to form a better understanding of the texts. Apart from explicit quotation of well-known text, nationalists may also use texts that are not so straightforward in their arguments. This makes the process of decoding even more important, if the meaning wants to be understood. In Figure 1, in addition to the names of hashtags and accounts, the author only wrote “come, you three, take a group picture.” Without the link provided by the @ function, an audience needs to search for information to understand why the author wanted to juxtapose them together and what were their relationships with the anti-Japan protest. With the links provided by the @ function, one can quickly go over the texts produced by those accounts and find out that all three accounts have produced Japan-related content and are called jingri by the nationalists, just like Zeng Ying. Only after surveying their accounts, one can understand the author’s intention: to publicly expose the three jingris to the audience and nationalists like a public trial.

Finally, when one hashtag combines with another hashtag, they can form an intertextual chain (Bonilla and Rosa, 2015), which links a broad range of texts from disparate topics and thematically strengthens the collective nationalist frame. The third hashtag used in the post is #起底反华势力背后金主ned (#reveal the sponsor behind anti-China forces ned). It is a text about the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in the US, who was denounced by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China as “subverting the legitimate governments of other countries and cultivating pro-US puppet forces” in the name of democracy (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2022). The Chinese party-state denounced that NED and other western hostile forces deceived young people in Hong Kong, in order to justify its suppression of the 2019 Hong Kong protest. Although NED has nothing to do with Zeng Ying, they are both attacked by the nationalsits with xenophobic sentiment. As one goes through the chain of texts through clicking this hashtag and other nationalist hashtags, the anti-foreign feelings are constantly intensified, and nationalist sentiment is also escalated.

Interdiscursivity

Hashtags also offer interdiscursivity to integrate non-nationalism discourses into the nationalist expressions. As a notion developed by Critical Discourse Analysis from the Bakhtinian tradition in literature studies, interdiscursivity refers to the mixing of diverse discourses or genres associated with different institutional and social meanings in a single text (Fairclough, 1993). The difference between intertextuality and interdiscursivity is that intertextuality refers to one text borrowed from other texts, while interdiscursivity turns to the text-external factors such as discourse (Bhatia, 2010). In our case, the hashtag facilitates the integration of discourse of misogyny (N = 65) and professionalism in journalism (N = 98) into the nationalist discourse. It not only made the nationalist claim more persuasive, but also complicated the discursive activism.

The interdiscursive mix of misogynist and nationalist discourses provided by the links of hashtags makes the nationalist attack on Zeng Ying more plausible and persuasive. A picture of Zeng standing in front of the logo of Prestige, a Japanese adult movie producer, was circulated among nationalists as a proof of her inappropriate behaviors as a woman. One post asked: “Why did Zeng Ying go to this pornography firm? To do an interview or to apply for a job? All the unusual things are traceable.” Another post put a similar question: “which decent girl would go the pornography firm and share their joint picture?” Japanese pornography has a huge fan base in China, but Chinese who follow the patriarchal social norms do not view being a porn star as a honorable position for a woman. These posts conveyed a clear idea of the good girl image in the eyes of misogynists. They tried to imply that Zeng’s abnormal support and compassion to Abe can be traced from her other abnormal behaviors such as taking and posting pictures with a pornography company. This interdiscursive mix of sexism and nationalism was also seen in a previous cyber nationalist activism, where misogynistic and nationalist slurs justified each other in attacks on a Japanese porn star Sora Aoi (Ng and Han, 2018).

Further, the nationalist hashtag can also invite contradicting arguments from another discourse. Within a single social media post, it is extremely hard for one to support or justify contrary ideas at the same time, but social media posts with contrary ideas can coexist well within the same hashtag. In this case, the nationalist hashtag allows contradicting ideas about professionalism in journalism to support the nationalist argument. For instance, one post said “Not to mention other content. You must know that bringing your subjective feelings into the objective facts is the most important taboo in journalism.” Another post (also cited above) wrote “Where do you stand? Where is the consciousness? Don’t you do a political review of your journalist?” The two posts expressed two contradicted standards of a qualified journalist. The first argued that a professional journalist should write their reports in a fair and objective way. The idea is aligned with the objectivity that has long been perceived as one fundamental principle in American journalism. However, the second post believed that a professional journalist should hold a firm nationalist standpoint. It is the Chinese version of professionalism in journalism: following the official ideology is one of the basic requirements of a journalist in China (Zhao, 1998b). A nationalist standpoint is by no means an objective one, especially in news coverage of national conflicts. However, the two seemingly contradictory requirements coexist under the same hashtag, because they are all utilized to support the collective nationalist frame that attacks Zeng. Zeng sobbed during the report, so she was not objective, and she sobbed for Abe so she was not holding a nationalist standpoint. The two contradicted professionalism standards can coexist well with each other in the nationalist hashtag.

In conclusion, the interconnectivity, intertextuality, and interdiscursivity reveal the discursive and networked nature of hashtag nationalism. It is discursive as the hashtag allows nationalists to use different methods to collect texts and discourse from other platforms and sources to justify their collective nationalist claim. It is networked as the hashtag encourages the connection between different social media post, texts, and discourses with the linkage provided, forming a unified theme of diversified expressions. With these affordances, hashtag nationalism shows strong grassroot features. The following analysis on the technological aspect of hashtag would show how the state took part in the nationalist campaign.

Deleting hashtag link: a subtle way to deal with public sentiment

The hashtag “The Paper’s Japan correspondent Zeng Ying wailed for Abe on live streaming” was deleted on July 9, the second day after Zeng Ying’s livestream report. Considering the fact that social media platforms in China outsource the tasks of censorship, it is reasonable to argue that the deletion of the hashtag is enforced by the party-state who held a different attitude from the popular nationalists. The disagreement between state-led nationalism and popular nationalism can be seen more clearly from the official condolence toward the assassination of Shinzo Abe and the online celebration of the netizens. The official reaction was sympathetic. Chinese President Xi pointed out that Abe made efforts to improve China-Japan relations when he was in office and contributed positively to build a China-Japan relationship that meets the needs of the new era (Global Times, 2022). Quite the contrary, many Chinese netizens expressed their delight over the news (Siow, 2022). As one post cited above, the author not only celebrated Abe’s death but also distinguished their standpoint from that of the Chinese government. Leading Chinese political propagandists such as Hu Xijin and Jin Canrong tried to stop the celebrations of the assassination, calling Chinese netizens to put aside political disputes, the effect of such persuasion, however, is very limited (Bloomberg, 2022).

The different attitudes over the death of Abe shows the dilemma of the Chinese party-state when facing popular nationalism. The nationalist sentiment contributes to the support to the party-state through patriotism accompanied by the expression of anti-Abe sentiment. Denouncement of Shinzo Abe and his perceived supporter Zeng Ying can create a collective identity based on nationality, which often co-occurs with expressions of love and support to the nation and further enhance the support for the ruling party (Woods and Dickson, 2017). However, the hardline position of popular nationalism does not fit well with the needs of Chinese international policy. The tough foreign policies demanded by nationalists can arouse fears among the neighboring nations about China’s rise, undermining the goal of reassuring the world about China’s “peaceful development” (Gries et al., 2016). Besides, popular nationalism also inclines to regard the official expressions as not strong enough to protect the national interest, and may subsequently develop into an anti-state sentiment (Gries, 2005). Therefore, the party-state hopes to control the continuously rising bottom-up sentiment from the public but definitely does not want to put itself on its opposite side.

The deletion of the hashtag link is a subtle and efficient way to fulfill the goal: to inhibit the rising popular nationalist sentiment in a non-confrontational way. It is worth noting that the deletion of the hashtag is not a complete censoring, which means the complete deletion of all hashtagged content, but only canceling the linkage of the hashtag. Users can neither post content with the hashtag, nor search social media posts through the name of the hashtag. As can be seen in Figure 2, Weibo posts already marked with the hashtag were not deleted. The color differences between the four hashtags indicate that the link of the hashtag “The Paper’s Japan correspondent Zeng Ying wailed for Abe on live streaming” has already been deleted, but the other three hashtags remain intact.

Figure 2.

A post with the link of one hashtag deleted.

The deletion of the hashtag link helps the party-state to fulfill its goals in two ways: First, it didn’t draw too much attention from the public as direct censorship. When social media posts are deleted, users would always get a notification from the platform telling them that the content was deleted due to breaking related laws and regulations, a commonly used reason in China. Direct censorship has been proved as inefficient in responding to the populist requests of popular nationalism, not to mention switching the public opinions (Cairns and Carlson, 2016; Reilly, 2011). Considering the networked nature of hashtag that enables the formation of a temporary counterpublic that can ferment a strong protest against the mainstream discourse, a direct censorship may trigger strong backlash from the public, forming a new wave of popular nationalism that are against the party-state (Cairns and Carlson, 2016). The unnoticed cancelation of hashtag link helps to dilute the strong sentiment with low potential to trigger strong backlash. Compared to the celebrations of the temporary block of Zeng’s Weibo account, no social media post discussing the deletion of the hashtag link has been detected in the gathered data.

Second, deleting the hashtag link did not prohibit public expressions as users can still express their nationalist sentiment through other hashtags. Since the outbreak of the hashtag nationalist protest, there are four popular hashtags related to Zeng Ying. The one that is most similar to the hashtag this article analyzed is #曾颖直播里哭安倍晋三 (#Zeng Ying cries for Abe in livestream). After news of Zeng’s suicide attempt came out, #曾颖自杀 (#Zeng Ying commits suicide) was created. Figure 3 shows the number of posts of the three related hashtags. The hashtag “Zeng Ying cries for Abe in livestream” had a surge of posts on July 9, the day when the hashtag “The Paper’s Japan correspondent Zeng Ying wailed for Abe on live streaming” was deleted. Comparing the name of these hashtags, only the one that was deleted by the party-state contains an obvious irony that denounces Zeng Ying. This also suggests that the party-state’s aim is to dilute the popular sentiment. As discussed above, hashtag plays an essential role in decentralized and individualized information sharing that facilitate the formation of networked publics. Since one of the hashtags was de-linked, the links of the network became loose, which undermined the information sharing among the networked publics and the visibility of the hashtag protests as well. Indeed, it is hard to give a definite conclusion that the bottom-up discursive protest was alleviated due to the deletion of the hashtag link, especially considering the surge of posts on July 9. But what is clear is that the most ironic hashtag stopped networking the bottom-up counterpublic without being noticed by the nationalists.

Figure 3.

The number of hashtagged posts.

When the hashtag lost its linkage, the functions of Zeng Ying’s account was also blocked. At that time, the apology Zeng made on Weibo had nearly 20,000 comments and a majority of them were nationalist slurs and curses toward the journalist. The block of Zeng’s Weibo should be regarded as an action by the party-state to inhibit the outburst of popular nationalist sentiment, because the block only lasts 2 days during which the number of nationalist posts were on the peak. The temporary block in fact helped buffer the attack toward Zeng through comments. Canceling the hashtag link and blocking account are very similar in the sense that both aimed to not trigger backlash from the public.

In a broad sense, the analysis of hashtag nationalism also pays attention to the more indirect and subtle form of information censoring enforced by the authoritarian regime. The deletion of hashtag links represents a censorship technique called “friction,” referring to “increasing the costs, either time or money, of access or spread of information” (Roberts, 2018: 6). According to Roberts, friction can often be circumvented by paying these costs, but more importantly, the aim is to make censorship go unnoticed or to be more easily explained. The fact that no social media post has talked about the disappearance of the link is a proof of the technique’s success, which fulfills the aim of the state-led nationalism as it didn’t draw too much attention from the public as the direct censorship.

Discussion: hashtag nationalism, state, and the public

Through the analysis of the emergence and evolution of a nationalist hashtag, this study creates a new linkage between existing literature of popular nationalism and digital activism by proposing a new concept, hashtag nationalism. As a form of cyber nationalism, hashtag nationalism bears strong features of the bottom-up popular nationalism. It promotes a strong nationalist sentiment and a hardline position that goes over expectations of official nationalism. Meanwhile, as a form of hashtag activism, it can connect the decentralized nationalist expression and form a temporary networked nationalist temporality that aims to compete with mainstream discourse in the digital space. In this sense, the hashtag nationalism is also a form of digital activism that creates an online space, at least temporarily, for political debates.

Unlike studies focusing on the grass-root features of cyber nationalism, the concept of hashtag nationalism concentrates on the interactions between the party-state and the public. For the netizens, the discursive and networked natures of hashtag nationalism contribute to the promotion of online popular nationalist frameworks and sentiment. The interconnectivity, intertextuality, and interdiscursivity of hashtag can connect decentralized nationalist expressions, diverse nationalist texts from different online platforms, and non-nationalism discourse (such as misogyny and professionalism) with nationalism, forming a collective nationalist frame in interpreting the incident. Overall, the hashtag enables digital nationalism to quickly create and disseminate information to form a strong bottom-up narrative that is different from the mainstream discourse. The analysis of the technological aspect of hashtags shows that the party-state can delete the link of hashtags to curb public discussions and rising nationalist sentiment. The hashtag that networks individuals also allows the party-state to use a more subtle and unnoticed way to inhibit popular nationalism. It facilitates the state to dilute the public sentiment without directly confronting the public, which reduces the potential to cause backlash against the state.

Further, hashtag nationalism emphasizes a relational approach to human-technology relation. It tries to avoid expressions that infers social media as the cause of human behaviors, like the social media empowers the public or serves the state. Social media may not exert its influences if its features cannot be perceived by the users. The affordances of a hashtag depend on the materiality of social media, ability of users, and the social context. Intertextuality of hashtags, for example, can only be realized when users use the link provided by the nationalist hashtag to understand previous texts produced when China-Japan tension was high. Therefore, the relation between social media and nationalists should also be understood as a dynamic process that may change with different users in different social and cultural backgrounds.

Moreover, the findings can be taken beyond China as the article pays particular attention to the evolving interactions between the state and the public, and the dynamic relation between users and social media. For instance, the interconnectivity, intertextuality, and interdiscursivity of twitter hashtag help grassroot nationalists to support conservative policies by emphasizing the imperative to protect American national interests through #AmericaFirst. The nationalist pursuits under this hashtag are significantly different from that of the current US government. This also leads to the limitation of this study. With no access to any insiders of the digital platform Sina Weibo, this article did not elaborate on the role of digital platform companies in the evolving digital nationalism. As a commercial company who is eager for web traffic and a collaborator of the Chinese party-state who must take the outsourced tasks of information censorship, the actions and logic of actions also played an important role in the formation of digital nationalism, which merits further attention.

Footnotes

Author’s note

The author agrees to the submission and the article is not currently being considered for publication by any other print or electronic journal.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Renyi He

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